Hands up everyone who read Freshwater and thought “When will Emezi grace us with a YA novel? That is clearly their metier.” Because I freely admit that I was not among your number. Freshwater was one of my best reads of 2018 — the writing was brutal and gorgeous, and I felt elated to be reading the debut of an author of Emezi’s talent, and to know that they had a whole writing career ahead of them and I would get to read all those books. But still, when I saw the announcement that Emezi would be releasing a YA…
Leave a CommentAuthor: Gin Jenny
In an effort to appear Current, I am putting a more Current link at the top of this links round-up but it will quickly become apparent that a lot of these are old links because I forgot to post my links round-ups in a timely manner, and I am sorry. I have no excuse except that I just forgot about it on Thursday. Here’s a history of all the times New York Times opinion columnists wrote opinion columns about how unkind the internet is to New York Times opinion columnists. THE ARCHIVE WON A HUGO THE ARCHIVE WON A HUGO…
Leave a CommentTo Tell the Truth Freely was published in 2009, a biography of a journalist and activist who died in 1931, and its applicability to modern-day politics is so acute that I tore through it at warp speed. Her political milieu is described as “a time when the Democrats were increasingly billing themselves as the party of white supremacy and the Republicans had largely abandoned any commitment to racial justice in favor of an alliance with big business.” I defy you not to shudder when you read that. Though Wells’s biographer repeatedly emphasizes her subject’s temper (and intemperance), it’s clear that…
Leave a CommentRemember that series on The Toast, Children’s Stories Made Horrifying? Where you would be like, hmm, but that story is already kind of horrifying, and then you’d read the piece and be like, “Ah.” Bob Proehl’s sophomore novel, The Nobody People, is X-Men Made Horrifying. Journalist Avi Hirsch is our way in to this story: An adrenaline junkie who’s done his best to settle down for his wife and kid, Avi is pursuing two seemingly unrelated stories, a bombing at a mall and another at a local black church. He learns that the man responsible has special powers, that there…
Leave a CommentIt’s Friday! Or, described to align more closely with my experience of this week, Monday Part Five. (That is a joke I cribbed from my brother-in-law, so please enjoy it and praise me as if I had coined it myself.) Litrally nothing has happened this entire week. Only time has passed, at an agonizingly slow rate. What is time? What is truth and goodness? Is there a future? I don’t know, and neither do you! To distract us from the existential dread we all feel, here are some links! Advice on how to dress professionally hits marginalized women so, so…
Leave a CommentHoo boy am I having a lot of thoughts lately about how maybe we should take a break from telling women to do less, and spend that time and energy telling men to do more. This is just one of my many ideas for making the world a better place; please vote for me for president. In the meantime, here are some links! Frankly, I think a great parenting move would be for parents of kids of all genders to focus on being attentive to the needs of others. But oh my God, yes, men do not clean up spills…
1 CommentLet the bells ring out the news that Whiskey Jenny read a book where the protagonist tells a whole bunch of lies to everyone else in the book all the time and she didn’t hate it. Gin Jenny is very excited because it feels like this opens up new worlds of book reading. This episode, we’re chatting about book slumps and how terrible they are but also how to end them; and then we review Magic for Liars, by Sarah Gailey, a book that both of us liked even though one of us usually doesn’t like books about lying liars.…
Leave a Comment